Thank you and good afternoon. Welcome to the fifth annual Northeast Indiana Defense Summit. It's so great to have so many of you back who have been here each year to be a part of this event. We're very excited that you joined us for what's going to be a jam-packed two days of discussions about the defense industry and the increasingly vital role that Indiana plays in our nation's defense. We're here this afternoon in the beautiful Pearl Events Center, which has been a part of the revival of downtown Fort Wayne. Later tonight, I invite all of you to join me next door at the beautiful Bradley Hotel for our welcome reception. And then tomorrow, we will conclude in a new venue because we have outgrown our venues of the past at the beautiful Grand Wayne Center, the heart of downtown Fort Wayne. It's our largest venue yet, and we've already sold it out. It's a testament to Indiana's growing defense footprint that this event gets bigger and bigger each and every year.
We have an exciting two days ahead of us. As you know, last year we had the Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, and I asked my team, how are we going to top that? I think we've done it. We have the greatest group of speakers and leaders a part of this summit that we've ever had, including the acting secretary of the Navy, the greatest branch and the greatest military in the history of the world.
Thank you to the one Navy, the fellow Navy veteran in the room. Hun Cao is going to speak to us tomorrow. The acting secretary of the United States Army, Adam Teal, is going to join us. My good friend and colleague from Pennsylvania, Senator Dave McCormick, is going to be here. The under secretary of war, Emil Michael, and other senior Department of War leaders, my former colleague and great friend who keynoted this event a few years ago, former congressman from Wisconsin, Mike Gallagher, pioneering defense companies on the front lines of innovation. Other senators, congressmen, legislators, even ambassadors are a part of the event this year that you're going to hear from tomorrow.
But today, we are going to begin our summit with a deep dive on two of the areas where Indiana is seeing truly significant growth: naval systems, naval weapons system, naval weapons station Crane, excuse me, or as I like to just call Crane Navy Base. How about that? Is that okay, Phil? Crane Navy Base. We're going to talk about incredible new developments that are happening at Crane. And then we're also going to talk about the drone testing ecosystem that Indiana is on the front lines of as well.
But before we dive in, I want to introduce a very good friend of mine, the Speaker of the House of the Indiana State House, State Representative Todd Houston. Todd Houston is a champion of Indiana's defense industry and the industrial base that we have built in this state. And when you hear from him, you're going to see why our industry has grown so rapidly in recent years, especially over the six years that he's been the leader at our Indiana State House. Let me be very clear: there is no better place to start a business or open a new production line than in Indiana. And with leaders like Speaker Todd Houston, we're going to keep it that way. Thank you for being a part of this event. Please join me in giving a warm welcome to the speaker of the state house, Todd Houston.
Well, thank you. Great. Good afternoon, and it's great to be here in Fort Wayne. And I want to start by thanking my longtime friend, Senator Banks, who's done a phenomenal job. Senator Banks and I have known each other since when we both had nothing but dark hair, and we both share a huge passion for Indiana University, but he's done a phenomenal job in Washington, D.C. And thank you, Senator, for the incredible job you've done, your leadership and your service, and for your advocacy of the Indiana defense industry and bringing everyone together for this incredible event. I also want to thank all the military leaders that are here today, our industry partners, and the innovators that have joined us. And thank you for what you're doing, as it is critical to our national security, and we're fortunate to have your talent and expertise right here in Indiana.
Indiana's experiencing tremendous momentum, and our growing defense sector is an important part of that success. For years, we've worked to build an environment where businesses can invest, innovate, create great-paying jobs, and continue to grow, and where Hoosier workers can pursue opportunities, build a career, and thrive. We've cut taxes. We've maintained responsible budgets. We've invested in infrastructure and workforce development. And we work to keep government from getting in the way of opportunity. And that approach has helped make Indiana one of the most competitive states in the country to do business.
Over the last five years, real GDP growth has grown faster in Indiana than all of our neighboring states. And last year, more people chose to move to Indiana than any of our neighbors. I'm going to repeat that: we're the fastest-growing state population-wise in the Midwest. Our GDP growth over the last 12 months has been six times that of Michigan, four times that of Ohio, three times that of Kentucky, and two times that of Illinois. You want to do business here in Indiana. Our unemployment rate is below the national average, and we're connecting workers with the skills they need to succeed.
We're leading the country right now in the total number of active apprentices per capita. This has been a huge focus of ours. We want to partner with business, industry, and higher ed to make sure we are giving kids experiences in industries that are going to grow throughout our state. And several of our growing apprenticeship programs are coming out of the defense sector, connecting Hoosier students to world-class jobs and employers right here in Indiana. And our defense sector is stepping up, and our state is benefiting from it. The state's defense sector has attracted $2.5 billion in committed capital investments since 2020 and has achieved a 24% increase in defense contracts during that same period.
These are significant investments that support high-paying jobs, strengthen our communities, and reinforce Indiana's role in protecting our country. And we're continuing to build on that momentum. As the senator noted, Crane in southern Indiana continues to grow as a major center for defense research, development, and innovation. Companies right here in Indiana, in northeast Indiana, are helping our state pursue new opportunities in aerospace, advanced energy, and other emerging defense technologies. And Indiana isn't just competing for the jobs of today. We're positioning ourselves to lead the industries of tomorrow. But now we've got to keep our foot on the gas pedal.
And that means we're going to continue to aggressively pursue these investments and opportunities. It means continuing to strengthen our workforce pipeline, connecting more Hoosiers with high-paying careers, and making sure our education and training programs keep pace with the needs of employers. See, we're building an employer-led system, not an education-based system. And it means we're also building on the partnerships we have between our state, our universities, our military installations, and the private sector that have already helped us drive so much success.
And we need to keep finding ways to embrace innovation and support entrepreneurs who are creating the next set of big ideas. We want those innovators to start and grow their companies here in the Hoosier State. Indiana has all the great ingredients to play an even bigger role in our national defense sector. And our focus at the State House is to keep building on those strengths and make sure Indiana remains a place where businesses want to invest and people want to build their futures. I'm excited about where we're heading, and I believe our best opportunities are still to come. So, thank you all for your contributions to the state's growth and success. Thanks again to my friend Senator Banks for inviting me to help kick off this exciting event. I hope you have a wonderful two days here in Indiana. Bring your businesses, bring your investments. We look forward to making you all Hoosiers. Thank you.
Thank you, Speaker Houston. Our first panel today looks at the historic transformation taking place at Crane. Joining us is the Honorable Mike Dodd, assistant secretary of war for critical technologies. John Bureer, CEO of the Acme Group. Phil Smith, command advocacy lead at Crane, and Rear Admiral Michael Richmond, deputy director of regional strike systems. Moderating the discussion is Mike Johns, senior vice president at Kratos Defense. Please join me in welcoming our panel.
Is this on? There we go. Welcome everybody. First, I'd like to say thank Senator Banks for arranging this event and his continued commitment to building the defense industrial ecosystem in the state of Indiana. The title of this panel is 'A New Era for Crane,' which I think is really appropriate considering everything that's happening today at Crane. For decades, Crane's been at the forefront of technology development, critical technologies getting out to the warfighter. But I believe that we have entered a new period that could fundamentally change Crane's trajectory. We're seeing Crane take on significantly more as far as expanded responsibilities in strategic weapons, hypersonics, other critical technologies.
We're seeing major investments in government infrastructure in technologies and programs that are coming to fruition. And perhaps just as importantly, we're seeing a lot of infrastructure and investment from the private sector that's following some of these technologies and these investments. The interesting thing that's happening right now is all three of these things are happening at the same time, which presents a unique opportunity, I think, for Crane to capitalize on what's sort of next in the pipeline.
So today, what we'd like to do is explore sort of three fundamental questions. One is what's driving Crane's expansion in national security and where is it headed? Second, how can we better connect technology, engineering technology, infrastructure to develop technologies to the warfighter faster? And third, how do we capitalize on this momentum so that we can build a more robust industrial base and put in all the infrastructure we need and make this a sustaining, enduring growth for this period in Crane? So, we have a great panel here today to address these critical areas.
With me we have the Honorable Mike Dodd, assistant secretary of war for critical technologies, representing the vast technology portfolio that is being developed and pushed out to the warfighter at scale. We have Admiral Mike Richmond, who represents the department's regional deterrence for strategic systems programs office, representing the critical weapons and the strategic weapons portfolio. We have John Bureer, who's the founder and CEO of Acme, who is making significant industrial investments into this area. And then we also have Phil Smith from Crane, who's also going to bring it together for us and talk about sort of how this all looks from the Crane inside view, inside the fence, if you will, and he's been involved with these programs for a very, very long time. So gentlemen, thanks for joining us, and we look forward to getting going. We have a lot to cover. So let's get going. We're going to leave some time at the end for some questions.
So let's get started with the Honorable Dodd. So the department is placing emphasis on accelerating critical technologies and fielding them at scale. Tell us about those investments, and how does Crane fit into those priorities, and where do you see opportunities for assuming a larger role for Crane?
Yeah, thanks, Mike, and thank you, Senator Banks, for putting on another great show and connecting with all the DIB and the performers and colleagues here. I think a couple of things. One, within my office we field and deploy capabilities in 24 months or less. So that's the construct by which we operate all the sprints. So I've got on my applied portfolio three of the named six critical technology areas: scale directed energy, quantum, battlefield information dominance, and contested logistics. And I've got all things microelectronics, semiconductors, space, nuclear command and control, the Office of Strategic Intelligence Analysis. I do a lot of the international stuff for R&E as well. So, fairly big book.
And I think a couple of things in our engagement with Crane. Recently we've announced a small modular reactor that we're doing with Crane. I'll use that as kind of the lead example. The single biggest reason we selected Indiana and Crane was the delegation, and Crane is a mission partner in their interest and ability to actually move at the speed of relevance and scale. So as we're trying to adjudicate the location in deploying some of these capabilities, that same thesis remains the same: who, what mission partner can move with us in 24 months or less to field and deploy. And I, you know, using SSP is a great mission partner example where we're getting commitments from the mission partner at the onset of any of our sprints to catch transition for and palm for budget for those capabilities out the other end.
So, we've got all the ingredients, you know, here in the state and with, you know, a great mission partner with Crane. And then they also got a unique acquisition capability, right? So, they can do business at the speed of business. Just within my portfolio, we've got half a dozen or so other transaction authority agreements. Two of those or three of those, Phil, live at Crane that they operate for us. So my ability to throughput projects at the speed of business is enabled by Crane as a great mission partner and business partner. So their offtake, their ability to move fast, and the business climate, as the speaker mentioned, and Senator Banks and the entire delegation are enablers and advocates that we can do all the things we need to do. That's where we land, that's where I land, you know, the business that we do in the states and with the mission partners.
Excellent. We'll touch on the business climate here in a couple of questions coming up. Admiral Richmond, so we're seeing one of the biggest growth areas we've seen at Crane is really in the strategic system side. So you think about what's going on with hypersonics and with the conventional, with SLBM-based strategic weapon systems. What's driving the expansion, and how do you envision Crane's role sort of evolving over the next 5 to 10 years?
Yeah, thanks. Hey, before I start, I was talking earlier. One, Senator Banks, thanks for pulling this together. The Indiana Defense Industrial Association, this is a phenomenal event. I grew up 80 miles away from here, Anderson, Indiana. And I think, you know, life decisions that got me from Anderson to Purdue a couple of times and then into the Navy, and then back here looking at you all. This is kind of what Reich looks like. We talk in SSP about relationships and rhythm. We've got technology that's important to understand your mission and have clarity of vision where you're going.
But I tell you what, what really sets us apart, certainly in SSP and a lot of what you all are talking about here and you all in the audience, is building that relationship, walking through audiences like this during the breaks, shaking hands, having a snack and a cup of coffee, and then understanding the side picture that you have in terms of the mission that you're going after. So it's wonderful to be here, and frankly I'm excited, as you mentioned, about the future of Crane. So SSP for 70 years has been the staple of the survivable leg of the nuclear triad. The D5 has been there, and Crane has certainly supported us with both personnel expertise, capability in the test area that is frankly second to none.
A couple of years ago, I transitioned from Naval Sea Systems Command over to SSP as the newly identified one-air to lead up hypersonics. Just a few weeks afterwards, I was also assigned the task to be the direct reporting program manager, deputy for SLBM nuclear cruise missile. So now I'm in an organization that for 70 years has done the one mission set, and we're shifting over to a regional deterrence capability, and that's in CPS, conventional prompt strike, and sea-launched nuclear cruise missile. And so when you think about the capability that we leveraged from Crane, again, radar, electronics, the test capability, the test infrastructure, you mentioned OTAs, extremely important to go fast and focus on getting outcomes out there as quickly as possible.
It just made a whole lot of sense that we were going to also leverage those existing relationships that we had built for all those years over on the D5 side of the house and help jumpstart the conventional prompt strike effort as well as the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile. So, I think when you see what we've been able to do with Crane and their facilities, it just makes sense that they're going to take the newly formed side of Strategic Systems Programs, my side, and do another 70 years of phenomenal work and frankly given us a capability in the department that we don't have and no one else in the world has. So, looking forward to one, the discussion today, and then continue building the relationship with Crane and its competency and the engineers.
Great. Thank you for that. So John, you and I have had many conversations over the last couple of years as we decided to locate the Prometheus Energetics joint venture that we're doing on Acme's munitions campus down there. So, Acme is making fairly substantial investments right now in this area to try to build this industrial base around this activity. Why now? Like, what made this the right place and the right time, and what does it take to make it successful from here?
Yeah, thanks, Mike. And also thank you, Senator Banks, for inviting me to speak today. My background is in the financial services industry. Years ago, I did not think I would be sitting next to a rear admiral and somebody who I've come to call a friend here over the last couple of years as we've been proceeding with building the munitions campus to Crane. Ultimately, Crane was the reason that brought us here, and it is the community and stakeholders that have kept us here for the munitions campus. Ultimately, what I sought out to do is to build ecosystems of complementary parties, not just but also primes, the supply chain, venture capital, startups, government labs, and we've done this quite well here in Indiana, and I don't think there are many other parts of the country that we could pull off what we've done.
Munitions campus and the national security industrial hub are our capstone project. It's 1,500 acres. We've got nine tenants signed for it now. We expect to spend about a billion dollars in the first couple of phases of the buildout and have $3 billion to spend overall on building out campuses. I would love nothing else to spend that here in Indiana with this generational investment that produces tens if not hundreds of new entrants into the defense industrial base. Ultimately, it comes down to the relationships and the varied stakeholders that you have that are part of this unique ecosystem that I think will continue to draw companies here for decades to come.
Thanks, Jonathan. So, Phil, you and I have been thinking about this problem for 20 years now together, is like how do we keep the momentum? How do we build these kind of technology things and how do we attract companies kind of coming here? So from inside the base perspective, what's fundamentally different now, and what should everybody know about sort of the opportunity that's here and ahead of everybody?
Yeah. Before I answer that question, I too am going to thank the senator for pulling this all together and having this fantastic forum. I'm five years in a row for myself and second year in a row that I've been on a panel. So, two years in the last two years I've been unsuccessful of dodging. But as the guy that actually lives in the area, right, and is born and raised third generation, I get emotional about this. It's been fantastic to see what the community is doing. When people say Crane, it's, I think in the last, you know, the first maybe 70 years of existence, maybe the first 60 years of existence, it was very focused inside the fence and what we were doing inside the fence.
And we knew, our leaders knew, this predates me, our leaders knew we needed to change our culture, needed to change our way because that's what our customer, that's what our nation needed, that's what our customers needed. And we fully started to embrace this idea of partnering with the best in the business. And whether that was industry or academia or whoever, we are going to make it our core mission to bring the best set of skill sets to our customer sets. And that was intentional, and we've been focused on that for a long time. And I think we're starting to see the fruits of that labor.
What's exciting when we say Crane, it's not just the NSWC tenant command that I work for. We have a little bit of everything for everybody in the audience. I'll start with the Naval Weapons Station, Commander Martinez and his group. So much exciting things that are going on with their energy resilience program. They have a new tenant command with SSP growing a very large footprint there and just an unbelievable amount of activity that's going there that's just really going to be the next step function in our transformation. I see the Army leadership is here. We talked about energetics and munitions and the partnership that they're growing and watching that, you know, an idea.
The other thing I do when I see the audience here, I see a lot of people I call all the time. So, I apologize if I blow up your phones. But anyways, John was one of the guys that called me up out of the blue and says, 'Hey, this is what we're thinking.' And we quickly went to work on making sure that we had the ecosystem that was going to fit his needs to answer his customer sets. And it's just been taken off ever since. And then of course NSWC, the tenant command in which I work for, has just been phenomenal in terms of our demand from our customer sets inside the Pentagon. There's probably not a national security priority that we're not working on in some form or fashion.
Whether it's the long-term support to the D5 mission that the admiral was talking about, to these new missions we're taking on with hypersonics and SLBM, to drone dominance, if there's, you know, there's probably not a drone company that we haven't been engaging with because we have to get after that with the transformation of the autonomous warfighter, autonomous Navy, very instrumental in setting up that capability with the program office and test capability. I could keep going on and on about what we do at Crane and the national leadership role we take. But once again, it goes back to that ecosystem we've created, the partnerships we've created, and a fantastic contracting shop that allows us to get after it at a very quick pace. And I'm glad the Honorable Dodd mentioned that. And he talked about his sprints. I'm half-time the Honorable Dodd, and I hear sprints in my sleep because he wants to get after it in two years or less. So thanks, Mike.
Oh, absolutely. So that's the other smart thing. I got Phil on 0.5, but I really got more than that. And then General Munich is here. We also now have an embed from the Indiana National Guard in my office as well. So really to make sure that we forge a relationship and engagement liaison with the state. And the final thing I'll say for the warfare center, you know, Crane as a capital fund warfare center isn't the customer, right? A lot of the industry in the DIB doesn't fully recognize that, like they have to sing for their supper. They have to win work, they have to perform work, and if they don't meet or exceed expectations they lose work. It's very competitive kind of in that space. But I think one of the testaments to Crane's success is one that they're eager to sing for their supper and win and perform.
Yep. Appreciate that. So probably to do a show of hands, how many people have Phil is at least half-time? So you got more time. So let's circle back to some of the investments that are happening at SSP at Crane. So as these weapon systems and the missions continue to grow, what are the critical things at Crane, the test infrastructure, the engineering infrastructure that are necessary to keep that going and the most important for your mission success?
Yeah, I think, you know, I talked about the years of experience that we've leveraged from Crane over on the D5 side of the house. So for SLBM and CPS, really that is somewhat of a cultural shift over in the nuclear weapons world in that we are really focused and myopically so on an outcome, creating a capability for the department that we need, making sure that we do that as quickly as possible. When you think about historically how you develop weapon systems, you like to do that or we have done that in a very linear fashion. Let's do some design work. You know, this, we'll do design work. Okay, after we design it and get all our i's dotted, t's crossed, let's do some testing. All right, the testing work, let's build a few prototypes and let's do some initial production runs and then let's run from there into fielding.
We don't have time to do that. We don't have time to do that in conventional prompt strike. We don't have time to do that in SLBM. And so what we need to be doing, and I'm taking a lot of lessons learned from hypersonics and conventional prompt strike and applying that to the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile program. So in CPS right now, we are doing that design phase, designing the current and next generation of the all-up booster stack and the glide body. And then we are also testing the current design and the next generation design, and we are in production. We're producing a variant of it, and it is being fielded.
So the key to doing that quickly in a new acquisition paradigm, as you've probably been hearing about from the department, is we need to do those all in a parallel fashion and learn each and every step of the way. So part of the learning is understanding risk. I need to understand exactly how my system will perform and understand the risk that I am accepting by doing all four of those phases in a parallel fashion. Really that's what we're looking at Crane to do. So I need data to do that, and I need to have the engineers and the test facilities here at Crane for conventional prompt strike and the nuclear cruise missile to feed me the data so that we can make data-informed decisions and risk-based decisions.
So looking to Crane for the underwater test facility, for example. So those who are not familiar and have not been out to Crane and seen this facility, it's phenomenal. It allows us in SSP to replicate, frankly, a hard environment, and that is the underwater launch environment. And so now I have a controlled area with subject matter experts that not just run the facility but the engineers to back it up. And the same engineers that I have designing and helping design the system are also over there helping to design tests coming from this new test facility at Crane and give me the data that as a program manager, frankly, I need to say, all right, we can accept this risk, let's go ahead and go to the next phase, let's go into an initial production phase, and then move on out into fielding.
That is new. That is new for how we've done it, certainly in the nuclear weapons world, and the test capability, the engineering analysis capability at Crane has enabled us to do it and do it at speed, and the speed of relevance that the department needs from us.
I'm just going to really add to that, the pool was cool as hell, and but they've also met our rad test, they've made massive investments in our rad test capability, and then they've put what we call a hardware-in-the-loop, or I put a glide body in a box is what I often refer to it. So there's just a tremendous amount of investment SSP has made in Crane proper, and we're really proud of that. It goes back to that long-term relationship and that long investment, and the engineers absolutely love the work. They love the mission.
Well, you kind of mentioned it earlier. It's indicative of one, the relationship, but also the trust and frankly the outcome. We know from a customer perspective when I shift over to Naval Surface Warfare Center Crane and ask that workforce to do frankly hard problems, I know that I'm going to get the data that I need out the other end and make a decision with it.
And if you haven't been able to go out and see the pool, the underwater launch test facility, it is...
I get in trouble every time I call it a pool too by my leadership. So it...
It is a very big pool, but it's an amazing engineering feat. I mean, they have their own power plant to basically service that whole thing. It's pretty incredible. Honorable, let's talk a little bit about, keep on the same theme of scale and speed and infrastructure. So if you think about like how you develop technologies, how do you get them out to the warfighter quickly? What needs to happen earlier in the process for whether it's power, energy, all the things that you need to think about if you're going to go on the sprints, you're going to do things in two years?
Yeah, we're doing these kind of in parallel. So the, and I mentioned, you know, kind of the leadoff comments owning our Office of Strategic Intelligence Analysis. What does that really mean? So that's kind of the red and blue capabilities that exist. So we take the red capabilities. Those inform our sprints. Again, we field deploy things in 24 months or less, but we design our sprints where are we peer-to-peer or near-peer to our adversaries. And unfortunately, we are not always ahead of our adversaries in some of these topic domains.
So when we look to create disparity of capability with our adversaries, we take red capability that informs our sprints, then that informs the investments that I make and resources that we apply. So that's kind of the thing one. And on the engagement and scaling with Crane. So once we know and design the sprints, in parallel to that, the team is continuously looking for the mission partners and the DIB performers who are going to be enablers of our go-fast requirement, and that is actual true capability already existing.
Second to that is their ability to financially, the financial capacity to perform. So two other things we've done. One, I have an embed from In-Q-Tel. If you're familiar with In-Q-Tel, they're kind of the private equity arm of the CIA. I also now have an embed from the Office of Strategic Capital, who does primarily loan guarantees and debt products, but they work with a portfolio of venture capital and private equity. So when we find DIB performers that we want to scale, we bring structured finance to them as well. So it's informed sprints with measured outcomes, and it's knowing the portfolio of performers and mission partners who are the enablers to have us actually scale, and then the financing piece. So we bring kind of all constructs that are the enablers for us to hit our 24 months or less.
So, Admiral Richmond, so maybe touch a little bit on the defense industrial base question there or the comment, just because if you think, I once heard Admiral Benedict say that he enjoyed under D5 the same supply chain for about 50 years. How does that change with SLBM and things like that? How do you bring new entrants into an SSP environment, if you will?
Yeah, I think that's a great question, and it kind of goes to the acquisition strategy that we've got for SLBM, and you mentioned it earlier, I mentioned it, you mentioned it. I tell you what, other transaction authorities and having a consortium that from a one-stop shop perspective, I can cast a net and touch hundreds and in some cases thousands of potential vendors to give me what we need over in SSP is extremely powerful. It's a force multiplier. And we're certainly doing that over on the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile side of the house. Let's make sure that we have clarity in where we're going. We have clarity in the requirements, communicate those using OTAs and using other methods to make sure that we're not just going to the same corner in the room and asking the same people, that we do in fact get the best and brightest.
And I think that provides the positive tension in the defense industrial base that helps us, frankly, go fast. Because the notion of rising tide floats all boats, that's kind of what it is. The rising tide of good information floats the entirety of the program. And as you mentioned, the pressure we have to create the capability and the outcome versus making sure that I'm doing all the compliance steps along the way is real. We need to get this capability out there. And so our strategy is let's use some of these unique consortium contracting vehicles and other transaction authorities and things of that nature to make sure that, frankly, I leave no industry stone unturned to make sure that I can get the best and brightest coming into the programs.
We owe it to the American public. We owe it to the department to make sure we get that best answer. And I'll circle back then to end my answer to your question with what I started, which is it's stuff like this. It goes back to the relationships. We often say as leaders, unless I know, I can't affect change and I can't lead. Part of it is knowing, part of it is developing relationships and understanding, and that's really what we're pushing over certainly on the SLBM side of the house and in CPS as well.
Yeah, good. So John, thinking sort of that industrial base theme right there. So you're front lines looking at a lot of different companies that you could attract to the munitions campus and things that are across the country really. So what is the draw to Crane? Like why now for this?
We've all seen the news. COVID was a wakeup call for us all, and with near-peer adversaries nipping at our heels, now is the right time to make these investments. We've had a couple of wakeup calls here recently. Our role is really as an enabler. So we are driven by those performers on the OTAs that these folks are speaking about and seek to de-risk them and bring money from the capital markets to enable them to ultimately fulfill those needs. And so why now? I would argue that we should have started this 10 years ago. We'd be in a better spot than we are today. It's never too early to start, and we are getting after it.
Excellent. So, Phil, you've seen a lot of this, the speed that we're doing, we're moving right now. What does it take to sort of take the next step to connect government, industry, the base, all the infrastructure to do things even faster than we're doing now?
Well, I think the first thing we need to do, Mike, is make sure we stay the course with what we have going on and we don't dip and go in reverse. We've established a lot of new programs with a lot of new capability, with a lot of new ideas on how to go fast and do things, whether it was with SLBM or with CPS. We had Crane working with TRMC, Test Resource Management Center, set up the Mach TV program, Mach XL, to try to drive new entrants, new ways of doing business, new ways of doing flight tests, right, to be able to get after a lot of these capabilities that we need to get technology mature and get it developed.
I think we as the department, we, Ukraine, need to continue to find those industry partners out there that have these innovative ideas and, as the Honorable does, I'm getting brownie points, get these into a sprint and get them transitioned into a program of record and get them...
I keep saying it till I hear it back, then I know it landed.
Yeah. I think from our ecosystems perspective, you know, I think you heard it from the speaker and from the senator, and you're going to hear it as a theme, is continue, and this is what John's really trying to do, is like lowering that barrier of entry for these new entrants to come in and be able to scale. And whether it's hypersonics or drones, which you know, or this transformation in autonomy, we need to be able to help industry scale, and we in Indiana need to have some skin in the game in how we go about doing that.
And so we, you know, the conversations I get a lot, you know, is I always say, you'll hear other people say, we're opportunity rich, we're infrastructure poor. So we have to make sure that we have, you know, again, I get all my cliches, you know, the saying, we got to be able to turn on the lights and flush the toilets, you know, so we got to have that infrastructure so industry can come in and hit the ground running to be able to scale up and maintain that momentum that we've created. And I think from my perspective, we have...
A lot of momentum. We're not quite there where we need to be yet, but in our ecosystem, we've got a fantastic — you know, the senator is over-the-top supportive. We have a delegation that's supportive. We have a state that's very much in the game. And so it's been, like I said earlier, it's been very exciting. We just need to put on the gas, put the gas pedal down to the floor.
Good. Let's switch a little bit and talk a little about building that industrial ecosystem around Crane, because I think that's really the next phase of development. We see so much investment on base. We're starting to see a lot of investment off base now. So, and you know, and you're starting to see a lot of companies start thinking about co-locating, supply chain starting to locate around those companies. So there's a lot of momentum. So, honorable, from your perspective — you have a broad perspective from industry to academia to government to the base to all of these things, right? So what does it take in order to sort of take that next step to be one of these industrial-based ecosystems you're seeing around the country that's equal to or better than what we're seeing in places like Huntsville or other things like that? What's it going to take to do that?
Well, I think it's already underway. I think, as all the panel has mentioned, all the ingredients are here and all this is very much underway. So whether it's ACME as the enabler and the attractant for space for performers, and then Westgate, we've got the investment side, you get the mission partner performer side from Crane, you have mission partners from the department who are coming and executing large program efforts with Crane. And I think, you know, Phil, you keep our foot on the gas. So the ingredients are here, we need to execute, we need to deliver, and that attracts more program efforts. Like I've recently just sent a new program over to Ukraine in my containerized effort, and that is just starting to grow legs.
Worth mentioning, within the department, the deputy secretary has what he calls kind of a holdback account. And when we have sprints that the deputy wants to execute, he's got the money in hand to then task out those sprints to whichever component within R&E is going to execute those things. And we've seen — I've now executed two of these. I've got one more developing now. So all the ingredients are here. You need to be able to plug it in and it needs to be able to execute and scale. And worth mentioning, you know, kind of the OT side and the consortium manager side. That's also a great enabler for us, and several of those exist here in the state where the consortium manager for us as the department can task them with an outcome that we're trying to achieve. The consortium manager that has the fiscal and contractual fiduciary responsibilities to the department, and then it becomes ostensibly a commercial contract for performers. So it is a great enabler, but it keeps it simpler for us when we kind of throw those sprints into our CMS to execute, and then the financing is available, and then you have developers who are here who are going to help all those performers scale. So all the ingredients are here, and it's just collectively we need to just execute.
So Phil, you've been kind of the chief business developer for Crane for a long time, you know, so you've touched a lot of these different kind of things. What's your opinion on what needs to happen sort of to build that industrial ecosystem that's starting now and like really accelerate it?
Well, I think I mentioned it earlier, is making sure that we have an attractive industrial park that business wants to come in and do business, and lowering that barrier. You know, it's a bottom line for business, right? So they have to, you know, get their plant started, they have to generate revenue, and they ultimately have to make money, right, to turn a profit. So we, you know, I think, you know, working with the state, you know, industry working with the state is understanding what the industry needs and then creating that environment. I think co-locating with the team that's doing acquisition or the engineering inside the fence, or most importantly the test apparatus that we have that can test and help accelerate that transition, is something that we really highlight as a strength for industry co-locating with us. But I think it's really working with the industrial parks, whether it's the Westgate certified tech park, the munitions campus, and you know, I look at land plots and how much, you know, which house we're going to buy so we can expand beyond our borders right now. But just it's creating that climate that industry wants to come and co-locate with the base and take advantage of what we have on the base.
And so John, thinking about beyond just buildings, right? So what else is needed in order to sort of build this industrial ecosystem — infrastructure, financing, capital, all of the things.
There's plenty of money out there. Our first tranche is $3 billion for us to put to work. I have more money than what I have projects to put to work today. And I think you can split this into two different thoughts. The first thought is where you start. So what kickstarted munitions campus was Prometheus. Solid rocket motors are ultimately the anchor, and what we build around it. We've announced Limitless recently, a small operator around drones that may seed adjacent areas that are around munitions. But ultimately, you've got to start somewhere, and you start that somewhere, and then you grow based on that. More thoughtfully, I think there are three things that we are trying to design into the campus to try to de-risk it. And those three things are new ideas as they come in. So we build relationships with government labs and universities and startup companies. They act as the lifeblood for new — you know, my hope is maybe you acquire a couple of those, Mike, those companies that we bring in. The second are new entrants, new methods of production, new people that are bringing new perspectives in. The defense industrial base has not had an overabundance of manufacturers over the last 50 years.
That, you know, of course, we're never going to be taking our foot off the gas as we're reshoring and nearshoring some of those activities. That's foundational. That's not going away. Crane is at the leading edge of all things trusted and assured microelectronics, of course, microelectronics commons. And I think in the quantum compute and sensing side, again, you're going to see Crane continue to be a strong performer. So I think at least in those three kind of performance areas, they're going to be enduring for time, if not decades.
This is easy. In the 2030s you're going to have conventional prompt strike off a Zumwalt that will be fielded and that will be firing off the DDG-1000 Zumwalt ships. You will also have conventional prompt strike coming off of a Virginia class submarine. You will also have a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile off of a Virginia class submarine. So that's easy what we're going to see in the 2030s.
Yeah, we'll add that to my job jar. You can do a sprint and then I'll catch it. But all of that, you know, enabled by Crane. And then the other thing I would be remiss — I mentioned this at the breakfast a couple months ago. What you're also going to see is Admiral Pat Finney assigned to Navy Support Activity Crane as a tenant and strategic assistance program supporting regional deterrence. So a flag officer from the US Navy here in Indiana permanently to again enable those things that we're going to see in 2030 and beyond. So pretty exciting time to be certainly a part of SSP, to be a part of the ecosystem here that is creating a capability that is one second to none. It's created in a fashion and in a timeline that frankly is what right looks like, and that's because of the industry-government-Crane-SSP partnership that we have.
And I think the importance of the flag officer at the command is definitely important. If you think about what sort of Huntsville transformed over the years, that was a major driving force. As you're aware, John, what do you think?
Very similar. Easy for — I'm a money guy and we focus on bulk. So I'd like to see our billion dollars deployed by 2030. I'd like to be coming to you crying that I can't find enough land to expand that. And that's it.
Well, you know, I think I may have mentioned it a few times already, but I'll echo what the admiral said. See a very robust SSP footprint fully established and getting after moving up those timelines and accelerating those programs. We're going to see the evolution, I think, of the base as it continues to evolve with the massive amount of investments that's happening on the base to continue to create critical technology capability. I think I heard it, there's like over six to 700 million worth of investment that's going on the base across all of our missions including Army and NSWC. And then, you know, the exciting thing — I don't know, I'm going to look at my commander what I can say — but the energy resilience effort is just tremendous with what the honorable Dodd has started through the MMR and what the realm of possibility is in terms of opening up private investment on the base to modernize the base infrastructure to bring, you know, SMRs and data centers to the base. That in itself is just another transformational step function in the area. And then when you look outside the fence, you know, you start to see the completion of the investments that have been made. You know, maybe Kratos puts a high-rise up, maybe, you know, next — and maybe a Chick-fil-A. I think there's been a lot of votes for a Chick-fil-A out at Westgate. We're all rooting for that as well. But the munitions camp is fully populated and I mean that's what I see in 2030. And, you know, once again, I get emotional about it. Like when we talked about this 20 years ago, it was just, you know, we saw what everybody else saw. We saw corn fields, we saw bean fields, and we were persistent. We got after it and our leaders before us made it a commitment that this is what we needed to do for our customer sets. And to see it happening is very, very rewarding and I cannot wait. I don't want to get any older, but I can't wait till 2030 to see it all come to a realization.
Great. Thanks for all the comments. Let's open it up to the audience and any questions for our great panel here. Microphone coming back your way.
Matthew Wel with Deltech. One thing you mentioned a number of times was OTAs. They've been around 25 years if not longer. One thing they're supposed to do is bring in non-traditional companies. How have you seen that work out? Do you see more non-traditional coming in? Also, on the second point, some people are going to say a lack of transparency because you're not doing FAR-based procurements. There may not be as much seen with consortia. You've got to be a part of it to get to information. When you have a legislator here, how do you convince them that the OTA is still useful when they may not have as much information out as you would with the FAR?
Yeah. The first thing I start with is the outputs, and obviously I meet with legislators all the time, a couple times a month. And I also like to get them into, you know, high-side briefings and do SAP briefs where they see the outputs of our efforts. I think that's the most important thing. The air is pretty thin in some of these technology domains as far as who can actually perform and the deep performers underneath. As far as transparency, I would massively push back on that. My office is radically transparent about everything that we do. When I meet with legislators, same same. When I owned DIU, one of the things that we executed over there was we called it the PET, the Project Execution Tracker, and we were sending out bi-monthly spend reports to the different members that asked for those kind of different use of funds. And then I think also when we meet with the legislators, you know, they want to ensure that our obligations and expenditures are commensurate with the funding profile that we have within the components. As far as the growth of our non-traditional performers or the DIB, it has significantly increased. It's not enough, candidly, and that's one of the reasons that I and my team do things like this to get outside of the Pentagon to go find technologists where they are — in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I was in Columbus, Ohio a couple days ago. But you've got to go where these pockets of technologists are to meet them where they are and understand how they operate and get a sense of their capability. And then we like to map their capability and even aggregate capability up into mission profiles that we're working on. So the performer may not, and oftentimes does not, meet or exceed the entire capability requirement for that effort. However, when I bolt it together with five or six other ones, now all of a sudden you do. So we've seen a huge uptick in DIB performers. But yeah, candidly, it's not enough. It needs to be more because more often than not, that's where the most disruptive ideas and capabilities come from. And then we bolt them together with our large primes who often help those performers scale or bring them on to some of the other program efforts that they're working on. Of course, we're working on one right now where Kratos is working with a number of the performers that were interesting to my office. Now those companies get to make business decisions together, but they become great enablers of the overall capability interest for my office.
Yeah. Let me double down on that on the notion of broadening the horizon. I've seen a tremendous increase in the companies, the smaller companies and the non-traditionals who are frankly coming to the table with valid, applicable designs and processes for hypersonics. I can see that coming through the OTAs. That's something when some folks and I in the audience started this about 25 years ago just did not see. The other thing that I want to say is it's a continuum of contracting vehicles. It's not OTA versus FAR. You used a term that I think is extremely important for what I need and for what you need, which is let's lower that barrier to entry. We want everyone to come and give us their bright ideas and be able to have an opportunity to one, develop that technology, and then transition it on. The other thing that we can get from both FAR-based and OTA contracts is that continuum. I use the baseball analogy. If I've got the technologist in the non-traditional throwing a baseball, I've got to have somebody there either at first base, second base, catcher, wherever to catch that baseball and then throw it for the double play. And so part of what we get from canvassing a wide net through whatever contract vehicle is those catchers and those pitchers to make sure that we're not just developing technology that will sit there, but we have a method and a process and a forum like this and like some of the industry days for the OTAs to communicate: you throw that ball to here and then I need you to take it to this other area. You build those relationships and that's how you get what we have pressure to do, which is an outcome as rapidly as possible.
Yeah. For a long time we've been talking about a Crane to Fort Wayne corridor. How do we connect the dots within the state of Indiana to create these force multipliers that help elevate the mission of Crane and the spotlight that you guys are bringing on to the state? We have the research universities. We have the Great Lakes. We have the testing capabilities in central Indiana. You know, as Speaker Houston mentioned, we're the fastest growing state in the Midwest. Northeast is the fastest growing corner of the state. We have the population. So what is it — some actionable items that stakeholders here in Northeast Indiana can do to support the mission and to add value to the development of the technology and services to the warfighter at the best possible cost?
For us, it's, you know, I'm going to demonstrate the demand signal from within the department and then I'm going to turn to the state and my mission partners to be the execution side of that — oversimplified. But then of course you got, you know, Senator Banks here and we got the best delegation and governor going as far as advocacy to create different corridors. So I'll use the MMR as a great example. When, you know, we kind of postured that with Senator Banks, who was and is our leading advocate for that, and then ensuring kind of we ran all the traps to make sure that it could happen. That's one of the reasons I landed it here in Crane. So I think, you know, there's all of you that need to get in cahoots and create that enabler-performer kind of function and kind of mantra. I'm going to bring the demand signal and, you know, the funding side.
So to build on that, myself, Jimmy Allen, the DASD for S&T Futures, the director for the Joint Hypersonic Transition Office, and then Matt Brackenoff, who's a Crane employee but leading the autonomous lead for a test resource — we were with Trine University this morning doing just that, right? What are those things? What are those capabilities that they have? What do they see in their future, where they want to go? And how do we help enable that? How do we align them with the department's needs and having those conversations? I think the same thing we do with the industry that's co-located in Fort Wayne, whether it's a large business — we already have some synergies with some of the businesses and the testing we do down at Crane, but it's understanding and aligning those needs and strategies where these businesses want to go, the strength of what we have at Crane, and just continuing that dialogue. And so I believe over the five years that I've been coming, that a lot of those conversations have started and continued to evolve. But it could always be better. But I'll tell you, as I've said a couple of times, this is, you know, 25-plus years in the making of what we're really now. So it doesn't happen overnight, but you need to be persistent. We all need to be persistent and continue to have that dialogue and hold each other accountable to achieving those outcomes.
Nick, one quick add to that is like I'll throw out a challenge statement right now. If there's anywhere where I can shoot 300 kilowatt lasers in the state, I'm open for business. High performance microwaves, same. You know, that's a challenging environment to test those systems, but — is anybody here from Whiteman? No. It is really difficult to get out to Whiteman Air Force Base and test those systems. The logistics for me and my people and systems to go out there is onerous. If that existed in some created corridor here in the state, I would be testing lasers here today.
Yeah. Just one follow-up on that. That's the first time I've heard the Crane to Fort Wayne corridor, but it actually probably goes to a conversation Speaker Houston, you and I had a couple of months ago about infrastructure. So we talked a little bit on the panel about all the different forms of infrastructure — physical, capital, political, you know, human resource infrastructure. I think there's just a tremendous opportunity for the state of Indiana to attract, retain, and grow defense companies because I can promise you, as a company that has facilities in probably 15, 20 different states right now, not all states are open for business. And there are a lot of states that are actually open for business that are closing where it becomes very, very difficult. And so there's an opportunity to attract and bring new companies in. But you have to have all that infrastructure in place. That's kind of what we talked about the other day in the back.
